A special court is set to pronounce its verdict on the bail application of an elderly Indian Jesuit activist five months after his arrest and detention on charges of sedition. The special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the federal anti-terror agency, has set March 2 to announce the result of the bail application of 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy. “We are happy that finally the court has fixed a date for announcing its order on the bail application,” said Father A. Santhanam, a Jesuit lawyer based in Tamil Nadu state who is following the case. Rights activists are concerned that the sick priest’s bail is being delayed for political reasons. He has been denied bail several times since he was arrested on Oct. 8 from his residence in Ranchi, capital of eastern India’s Jharkhand state, and detained in a jail in Mumbai, capital of Maharashtra state. Father Swamy applied for regular bail on Nov. 26 after his first bail application... 

Police in southern India have filed false charges against a church pastor after tribal animists assaulted him for his faith so severely that he was hospitalized for two days, sources said. The pastor and three others face a range of fabricated charges such as causing hurt and, in the pastor’s case, sexual harassment, filed in retaliation for his reporting a Jan. 3 assault on him by a mob of about 20 tribal animists in Abbigeri village, Koppal District, Karnataka state, sources said. “It appears the police came under pressure after the assailants got to know about the cases filed against them,” Shyam Sundar, an attorney representing the pastor told Morning Star News. “As a counterblast, they filed a petition with the same contents filed by Christians against them, alleging that Pastor Lamani assaulted a woman and that his wife and the other believers also have insulted the Banjara community members...” 

Police in the southern Indian state of Telangana have arrested two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers for assaulting a pastor accused of carrying out religious conversions. Pastor Chandra Mouli of the Jerusalem Church in Hasthinapuram, Vanasthalipuram, was attacked when he visited the house of church member Jayamma on Jan. 28, police official K. Murali Mohan said. One of Jayamma's family members was sick, so the pastor had gone there to lead prayers. “Lately we have been witnessing regular attacks against Christians in the state, which is very dangerous for a secular society like India. We have to address this issue or else we may face big problems in the future,” Pastor Samuel of Jesus Christ of Nazareth Ministries told UCA News. “We have to be careful about fanatic groups who are trying to create hatred among different faiths by dividing people in the name of caste, creed and religion and trying to push their propaganda...

An under-construction Protestant church in the southern Indian state of Telangana was demolished by a mob of radical Hindus on Jan. 20.
Gethsemane Prardana Mandiram (church) in Mahabubabad was attacked by a group of Hindu fanatics headed by a leader named Bura Venakanna, said Pastor Muhammad Afzal Paul.
“Local Christians believe that the main reason for the attack is that there are around 80 churches of different denominations in a radius of 10 kilometers, which the Bajrang Dal [a radical Hindu group] could not accept,” Pastor Levi of the Power of Jesus Fellowship, a Protestant church, told UCA News.
“The local administration has stationed some police officers at the church attack site and it is under investigation. The church is very small with about 100 members...

Six Christian families were worshipping in a wood-and-hay structure in eastern India last month when an influential man of wealth wielding an axe led others in and, in coarse language, asked why they had abandoned their tribal religion.
Elder Burjo Tadinji of the church in Odisha state’s Chichima village, answered, “We have known the true living God; we will not leave him. We used to indulge in fights and speak lies, but we do not do all that now. We like this faith, and that is why we follow it.”
Outraged, the leader of the mob of 20-25 men from three different villages began swinging the axe on the church structure, according to pastor Bibudhan Pradhan, who normally leads the small congregation of 15 but was absent that day (Dec. 13).
“They manhandled the Christians, damaged [an adjacent] Christian home, and broke the thatched structure with the axe,” Pastor Pradhan, 48, told Morning Star News......